There is no better sign of being dogmatic than handwaving away someone else's argument as dogma without addressing the points raised. Another good sign of being dogmatic is refusing to even discuss what it would take to change your mind on the issue. The hypothesis that is the most ludicrous and in need of validation is that increasing concentrations of greenhouse gas will not cause global warming. Strange that you do not see that hypothesis as requiring any proof whatsoever.

Your stance that models must be absolutely veriified before taking action flies in the face of most rational decision making. Most decisions are made by weighing the possible benefits versus the potential risks not absolute proof of the right decision. Your refusal to admit this or address this is the surest sign that you will not consider an opinion different from yours on this issue. You actually touch on cost benefit issues then run away from it by looking at the potential negatives of only one option.

How many choices do you make in your daily life based on absolute scientific proof? What percent of laws do you think get passed based on scientific proof? Do you think all the laws passed without scientific proof are unjustified? When will you address the potential costs of not doing anything about global warming and how high they have to go before you will consider the costs significant. Be honest on this issue for once and don't avoid these questions.

You also failed to address in any way my comments on the modeling process. You simply wish to hand wave away models without discussing what is involved in making them or the meaning of general agreement between independent models.

You also failed to acknowledge yet again the data we do have that global warming is a reasonable hypothesis. Just as with your doctor analogy you ignore that we are not operating black box. We have a suspect cause with evidence albeit inconclusive. Prescribing medicine for a suspected disease rather than a confirmed one is far from prescribing drugs at random which is indeed dangerous. It is obvious from the numerous trips I've made to the doctor with kids over the last year that most prescriptions are not made based on a conclusive diagnosis. Once again you ignore the uncertainty in real life.

Public policy is politics not science. You keep ignoring this in your demand of absolute scientific certainty. Public policy frequently demands acting without absolute certainty. Would it be nice to have it sure! When is acting without certainty required? When the risks of not acting are great. You logic is similar to our failure of nerve in acting versus Al-quida. We were more worried about the modest nearly sure risk of offending arab allies than the more distant seeming risk of massive loss of life. You are focused solely on the obvious near term risk of having to spend some small fraction of your taxes or purchases on preventing GW rather than more distant risks of greater consequence.

You are worried about modest rises in your cost of living compared to billions of dollars in losses, personal devastation and possible loss of life to millions. I do not claim that these are sure things. My point is that they are very possible outcomes based on our current state of knowledge. You consistently ignore this and act like not knowing with absolute certainty the risk is real absolves us of responsibility for our actions. That's not how my moral compass works. If we can prevent damage that has a reasonable chance of occuring I believe we should when the costs of not acting are potentially much higher than those for acting.

If waiting for certainty would not matter, I would favor that course as well. That is simply not the case. By the time global warming can be clearly proven beyond a doubt to correlate with increasing CO2 above the noisy background significant warming will have to have occured. You are in effect demanding heavy losses before taking action and have consistently avoided this issue.

Regards,
Mark